Skip to content
Anomaly GraphCONNECT THE UNEXPLAINED
Start investigating
← Research library

Research source

But no theory is so plausible, or is supported by such names, as that which deduces the English Fairy from the…

Date of account
Nineteenth-century comparative survey
Source
The Fairy Mythology Illustrative of the Romance and Superstition of Various Countries
Reference
The Fairy Mythology Illustrative of the Romance and Superstition of Various Countries · selected passage 12
Rights
public_domain
Language
English with translated traditional material
Record updated
2026-08-24

View the original source ↗

Record summary

But no theory is so plausible, or is supported by such names, as that which deduces the English Fairy from the Persian Peri

Published source text

Read the available text below. Archive transcriptions may contain OCR errors; later context is labelled separately. A recorded claim is not a finding that it happened.

Source passage

Source text · mention only

But no theory is so plausible, or is supported by such names, as that which deduces the English Fairy from the Persian Peri. It is said that the Paynim foe, whom the warriors of the Cross encountered in Palestine, spoke only Arabic; the alphabet of which language, it is well known, possesses no _p_, and therefore organically substitutes an _f_ in such foreign words as contain the former letter; consequently Peri became, in the mouth of an Arab, Feri, whence the crusaders and pilgrims, who carried back to Europe the marvellous tales of Asia, introduced into the West the Arabo-Persian word _Fairy_. It is further added, that the Morgain or Morgana, so celebrated in old romance, is Merjan Peri, equally celebrated all over the East.

Historical context

Contextual commentary · mention only

This material belongs to a folklore tradition. Story type, collector, community, transmission and literary editing matter when comparing it with other sources.

Modern context

Contextual commentary · mention only

Lattice compares motifs and reported features without assuming that a traditional being is a biological species or that similar stories document one external cause.

Investigate related details with Anomaly Graph’s account-based search, or read how matching and provenance work.